Kapka Kassabova

Kapka Kassabova shortlisted for Baillie Gifford Prize

by SRB

Kapka Kassabova shortlisted for Baillie Gifford Prize

November 14, 2017 | by SRB

We are a little late with this one but we are delighted to note that Kapka Kassabova has been shortlisted for the £30,000 Baillie Gifford Prize, previously the Samuel Johnson Prize. You can read an interview with Kaka on their website and an excellent review of her book, Border: A Journey to The Edge of Europe on our site.

The six titles chosen by the judging panel span history, popular science, travel and memoir, with several addressing grand themes including identity, faith, medicine and mortality.

The history of Islam is the subject of Christopher de Bellaigue’s The Islamic Enlightenment: The Modern Struggle, which looks at some of the visionaries and radicals of historic Islamic civilizations from Cairo to Tehran. Historian Simon Schama chronicles more than four centuries of Jewish history through remarkable personal stories in Belonging: the Story of the Jews, 1492-1900.

Kapka Kassabova’s Border: A Journey to The Edge of Europe examines the border zone between Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece, once rumoured to be an easier crossing point into the West than the Berlin Wall. If Kassabova’s book is a fusion of travel writing and memoir then Daniel Mendelsohn’s An Odyssey: A Father, A Son and An Epic combines the latter with literary studies, reflecting on the father-son relationship through the lens of Homer’s seminal poem.

There are two works of popular science on the list, with two very different books exploring the boundaries of science. David France’s How to Survive a Plague tells the story of the grassroots AIDS activists, many of whom suffered from the disease, who helped develop the essential drugs that shifted the tide in the fight against an infection that was mostly fatal at the time. Mark O’Connell’s To Be A Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death explores the technological and philosophical movement of transhumanism through encounters with some of its key players.

Sir Peter Bazalgette, chair of judges, says:
‘The exceptional shortlist for the 2017 Baillie Gifford Prize covers religion, culture, science and sexuality… and that’s just for starters. But what all the six books have in common is that they’re incredibly well-written, they’re really enjoyable and they tell great stories.’